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]]>The NASCAR Xfinity Series race schedule heads to Iowa today for the US Cellular 250. The race comes even as the driver standings begin to define themselves, as the 2015 racing schedule continues past the halfway point. Chris Buescher leads the pack heading into today’s action, which has a late start time and airs on a surprise TV channel but is also being made available as a live stream online option.

Buescher leads the NASCAR Xfinity Series standings by twenty-five points over the field, with last year’s champion Chase Elliott in second place. Ty Dillon is in third place, just five points behind Elliott. Regan Smith and Elliott Sadler round out the top five, with Darrell Wallace Jr falling off the pace in sixth but looking to rebound. Although this weekend’s Sprint Cup race at the Poconos, the Xfinity drivers are at Iowa Speedway, marking a rare split between NASCAR’s two biggest circuits. This means none of the Sprint drivers will be able to double-dip, opening the field for the full time Xfinity drivers today.

Today’s NASCAR Xfinity Series US Cellular 250 race has a start time schedule of 8:00pm eastern time, 7:00pm local Iowa time, and airs on TV channel NBCSN, the NBC Sports Network. The race is also available as a live stream online.

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]]>What do a career losing record and zero playoff appearances get you? If you’re Miami Dolphins head coach Joe Philbin, it gets you Ndamukong Suh and one last chance to make progress. The Dolphins have turned in three non-winning campaigns under Philbin, and even as young quarterback Ryan Tannehill has progressed each year, the team has had the feel of spinning its wheels. Even as the general manager, offensive coordinator and several veteran players have been replaced, Philbin still stands. But is this about to be his last stand?

This should be a breakthrough season for Tannehill. His statistics have improved in each of his three seasons since he began starting as a rookie. And now a mismatched wide receiver corps has been remade to suit his talents and temperament. And the mere addition of Ndamukong Suh to the defensive line means that production should be up on that side of the ball. The question for the Miami Dolphins is whether that on-the-field progress will translate into something better than the eight win seasons that the term has become known for in recent years.

And that depends on Joe Philbin. Miami Dolphins fans have derided him for his late game decision making, his use of timeouts, his obliviousness to the “Bullygate” scandal, and his perceived lack of leadership. But mostly they’re just waiting for their first playoff game in seven years and their first playoff win in fifteen years. If they don’t get it, there’s a good chance they’ll get a new head coach in the offseason. After all, it’s the only change the team hasn’t made over the past three years.

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]]>The Philadelphia Eagles weren’t willing to give away the farm in order to trade up for Marcus Mariota, and so now they head into the 2015 season with Sam Bradford and Mark Sanchez as their top two quarterbacks on the roster. The question isn’t so much whether they’re better than last season, in which the since-expunged Nick Foles was their starter, but whether they’re better off for having missed out on Mariota. And that answer will become clear as this season goes on.

To be clear, Marcus Mariota would have been the better fit. The offense the Philadelphia Eagles are running was literally built around him when head coach Chip Kelly was still at Oregon with Mariota as his quarterback. But the cost would have been steep: multiple first round picks, multiple later round picks, existing veterans and perhaps more. And so a team that wasn’t good enough to make the playoffs last season would have become worse at several positions simply to upgrade the quarterback position.

If Mariota goes on to become a Hall of Famer in Tennessee, or even if he merely has a strong rookie season, there will be much second guessing in Philly. But if the likes of Bradford and Sanchez end up being just enough to bridge the gap as the rest of the roster improves in 2015, Chip Kelly might get to keep his job after all.

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]]>The Miami Heat have traded Shabazz Napier to the Orlando Magic, marking the final nail in the coffin of the franchise’s divorce from LeBron James. Last offseason James publicly prodded the Heat into drafting Napier while implying that it would make him more likely to remain with the team, and they responded by trading up in the draft to take him. But just weeks later, LeBron departed for the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Napier call-and-response had appeared to be a sure sign that he was remaining in Miami. And while few NBA fans around the nation noticed it because they were too busy being excited that LeBron was leaving the Heat to care about the circumstances, the Napier incident is one which should define LeBron’s legacy. The question of course is what he was really up to last offseason.

Various after-the-fact reports suggest that LeBron James had been negotiating a return to Cleveland with the team’s owner before he had even finished losing the 2014 NBA Finals. If so that paints a dark picture of James’ timeline. The Miami Heat were dominating in the playoffs that season, and then just as the rumors went public about him and the Cavs, suddenly the Heat appeared to lose focus and lost the Finals. But James appeared to put those rumors to rest after the playoffs ended.

His Miami Heat teammates were so thoroughly convinced he was returning that most of them opted out of their contracts to create more salary cap room for James to re-sign for the largest dollar amount possible, knowing that they would then be slotted back into the mix, each making less money than they otherwise could have. But if LeBron knew he was leaving, why would he have allowed his teammates to make this kind of self-sacrifice for no reason? One theory is he was hoping that, after getting them to opt out of their contracts, he could then take advantage of their free agent status to lure them into following him to Cleveland. While LeBron did end up recruiting several of them, only James Jones agreed to do so.

But the stranger question is why LeBron pushed the Miami Heat into drafting Shabazz Napier. For one thing, he’s never liked playing with rookies. In fact when he got back to Cleveland, the first thing he did was have the team trade away Andrew Wiggins (who went on to become NBA Rookie of the Year elsewhere). Yet LeBron all but insisted the Heat draft Napier. It made little sense when we all thought he was remaining in Miami. His departure just a few days later suggests that perhaps he was trying push Miami into doing something stupid, thereby handicapping the team’s chances of adequately competing against him the following season.

And that’s where things get troubling. Are we really to believe that the greatest player of his generation decided that he was changing teams and then set out on a secret plot to undermine his old team in every way possible, in order to give his new team a better chance in the playoffs? It’s the kind of movie plot that would get rejected for sounding too unrealistic.

And yet how does one explain this: LeBron has a history of latching onto certain players as his personal favorites (Jones, Mike Miller) and then deciding he wants them on his team for their entire careers, regardless of how much or little they contribute on the court. If Shabazz Napier really was his favorite college player, why is it that he’s just been traded to the Magic and not to the Cavaliers? His salary is small enough to fit under any salary cap. The compensation was a mere second round draft pick. And yet LeBron didn’t lift a finger to nab Napier even at a giveaway price, even though we all know he’s calling the personnel shots in Cleveland.

That suggests that he never really did want to play with Napier to begin with, and that his public campaign to get the Miami Heat to draft the kid was some sort of weird ruse. And if so, then his effort to get his Heat teammates to all opt out of their contracts was also part of trying to throw off the competitive balance of the Eastern Conference. By the time LeBron initiated those moves, he was already in contact with Cavs owner Dan Gilbert. In NBA circles, Gilbert is largely seen as one of the more inept team owners. It is possible that he was pulling the strings on all this chicanery, and that LeBron was wittingly or unwittingly his puppet during the 2014 offseason?

It’s difficult to wrap your head around the idea of LeBron James, even at the behest of a slimy team owner, doing something so dastardly on purpose. But then again, it’s hard to look past the fact that he wanted nothing to do with his professed “favorite player” Shabazz Napier when he became easily available this week. And so now the question, the one that defines the legacy of LeBron James not as a player but as a professional, becomes this: is a conniving backstabber who dishonestly screwed over his former employer and former teammates on purpose, or is he just a total flake and really couldn’t make up his mind which team he wanted to play for until the last minute? Those may not be the most flattering options for the best basketball player of his generation. But the circumstances dictate that one of the two is the absolute truth.

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]]>The Oakland Raiders enter the 2015 season with a new head coach in Jack Del Rio, a rising young quarterback in Derek Carr, a talent infusion at a few key positions, and now their coach says his team can win the AFC West. It’s that time of year where no one has been eliminated from anything because no one has played a down yet, so coaches can get away with trying to pump up their teams by making whatever predictions they like. But is there real reason to believe the Raiders might get something done this season?

It cost Del Rio nothing to state on the Oakland Raiders website this week that his team plans to win the AFC West. It’s not as if the other three teams in the division are going to play them tougher simply because he made such a claim in July, nor is anyone going to remember the claim by the time the season is over. But here’s the thing about the AFC West: it may be more vulnerable than people think.

The Denver Broncos are the odds-on favorites in the division for 2015. But Peyton Manning hasn’t looked like himself for a little while, and it’s not clear how he’ll look coming back from the injury that married his 2014 campaign. Plus he has a new head coach, and Manning doesn’t generally like change. The Kansas City Chiefs took a step backward last season. And the San Diego Chargers are facing the uncertainty of possibly moving to Los Angeles at season’s end, with their franchise quarterback Philip Rivers suggesting that he may not be willing to move there. Put all that in a hopper, and the Oakland Raiders just might see the door open for them to do something in the division – but a lot of things would have to go their way outside the building. Still, Jack Del Rio risks nothing by pumping up his team by saying these kinds of things during the summer.

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]]>The iPhone 7 and its release date are coming into focus even as Apple enjoys record setting sales of the iPhone 6, struggles to produce sufficient inventory of the Apple Watch, and ponders how best to get its streaming music service off the ground. Amid this transitional time, Apple must consider whether to shake up its smartphone strategy for the second time in twelve months, or whether to play it safe and attempt to ride its current wave of success for another year. Here’s a look at the prospects for the iPhone 7 from top to bottom.

The iPhone 7 presents an opportunity for Apple to incorporate Force Touch from its Watch interface into its smartphone design. The feature allows for a handful of alternate functionality on the Watch, the rough equivalent of right-clicking. Moving that concept to a larger iPhone screen could open up the door for far more alternate commands. But it could also be tricky to incorporate into a more complex interface, and would require iOS app developers to incorporate those commands into the next versions of their apps once users become accustomed to being able to bring up certain Force Touch commands in the built-in apps and interface.

This also marks a turning point for storage capacity. Even as the iPhone 6 climbed to a high end of 128 GB of storage, the low end still clocks in at a mere 16 GB. If the iPhone 7 shifts to a 32-64-128 GB lineup, it takes away Apple’s ability to upsell buyers based on the ineptness of the 16 GB model, and forces the company to come up with new ways to make the higher end variants more attractive to customers.

Apple has a history of redesigning the external styling of the iPhone each time it reaches a new model number. The iPhone 6 marked a return to the curved siding of the first few generations. Some users have suggested Apple may return to the flat siding of the iPhone 4-5 era. However that was less about styling than it was about externalizing the antenna, something which has since been bypassed with the iPhone 6 design. So however Apple changes up the iPhone 7 styling, flat sides are unlikely to be a part of the equation.

Finally there is the matter of when the iPhone 7 will arrive. With sales strong, Apple is in no hurry to launch its next iPhone ahead of schedule. However the traditional twelve month mark will arrive in the September October range, and Apple will want to push a new model to market in that timeframe in 2015, well ahead of the holiday shopping season. The question becomes whether Apple will skip straight to the iPhone 7 this year, or offer an intermediary iPhone 6S in the mean time. That marks the iPhone 7 release date as being either in September-October of 2015, or in September-October of 2016.

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]]>NASCAR headed to the Brickyard today as the Sprint Cup series schedule set up shop in Indianapolis for the Jeff Kyle 400 on the same track which hosts the Indy 500. The confluence of the two types of racing made for a unique spectacle, as stock car drivers attemped to navigate the more complex track which was designed for smaller cars. Today’s race has numerous cautions and a green-white-checker finish.

Kevin Harvick was attempting to expand his lead in the NASCAR Sprint Cup standings, heading into today with a sixty-nine point lead over second place driver Joey Logano. Dale Earnhardt Jr was in third place, just ten points behind Logano, while Jimmie Johnson and Martin Truex Jr rounded out the top five. With the midway point of the season having come and gone, drivers can still sneak into the Chase for the Cup with a single victory, meaning everyone is still in the hunt. So who won?

Today’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Brickyard 400 race was won by Kyle Bucsh, who won his third consecutive race. Joey Logano came in second place after failing to catch Busch on the green-white-checker restart. Points leader Harvick finished in third place. The next race on the Sprint Cup scheduled is the Windows 10 400 at the Poconos next Sunday afternoon.

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]]>The NASCAR Xfinity Series schedule heads to Indianapolis today for the Lilly Diabetes 250 race, even as the driver standings continue to define themselves as the 2015 season goes on, with sixty-eight points now separating the top five spots on the leaderboard. Today’s race takes place on the same Brickyard track as the Indy 500 and has an afternoon start time with a surprise TV channel as well as a live stream online option.

Chris Buescher has opened up an impressive lead over the NASCAR Xfinity Series field, with thirty-one points separating him and the nearest second place competitor. Chase Elliott, who won the Xfinity championship in 2014 and is looking to break into the Sprint Cup eventually, currently hold that second place spot. Ty Dillon is in third place, just seven points behind Elliott, a gap he’ll look to close today. Regan Smith, last year’s second place finisher, and former Sprint Cup driver Elliott Sadler round out the top five. NASCAR is spending the weekend in Indiana, with the Xfinity Series racing today to raise awareness for diabetes, while the Sprint Cup is racing tomorrow in the Brickyard 400.

Today’s NASCAR Xfinity Series Lilly Diabetes 250 race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway has a start time schedule of 3:30pm eastern time, 12:30pm pacific time, and airs on TV channel NBC. This is the rare instance of an Xfinity race airing on NBC instead of NBCSN. The race is also being made available as a live stream online.

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]]>0Will Stableyhttp://stableytimes.comhttp://www.stableytimes.com/?p=260322015-07-18T21:25:38Z2015-07-18T21:25:38ZDonald Trump goes after John McCain's war hero status. How will republican voters react to party divide?

]]>Now that Donald Trump is attacking John McCain for being a war hero, this next round of poll numbers is going to teach us a few things. Republican voters tend to build their identity around expressing support for troops and veterans at every turn. And yet Bush won by attacking McCain’s war hero status in 2000, and again by attacking John Kerry’s war hero status in 2004. But he did it in a more subtle manner by spreading lies about their war records. Trump is outright saying that McCain is a loser because he got captured. And I don’t know how that’s going to play on their side of the fence.

On the one hand, moderate traditional conservatives are now less likely to support Donald Trump than ever. But they’re not the ones who have been propping him up to begin with. His base is a mismatched combination of extremist “kill-em-all” conservatives, and oblivious “all-politicians-suck” moderates. And this may only make him more popular with both of those groups.

The extremists only care about shows of strength. By ferociously attacking a war hero like McCain, Trump is showing them that he’s afraid of literally no one. In their minds, that makes him the best candidate to go wipe out all of our “enemies” and turn America into the true conqueror that they believe it was always meant to be. It wouldn’t be a shock if these people decide that McCain is weak because he couldn’t stand up to Trump, and therefore he deserved to be attacked.

The “all politicians are the same” camp only care about finding a candidate who is willing to bash all other politicians, bash both parties, bash the government in general, and make them feel good about their own political ignorance. Trump is their man, if they decide they can overlook everything that’s inherently horrible about him. They’ll flinch at the idea of him attacking a war hero. But at the same time, McCain has been a senator for decades, and they’ll love that Trump is attacking such a prominent career politician.

This is likely the final nail in the coffin when it comes to the idea that Trump could actually win the general election if he were the republican nominee. Polls already show that moderate republicans would vote for Hillary just to keep him out of the White House, and that sentiment will get stronger after this incident.

But as for Trump’s chances of winning the republican nomination? Even as the mainstream continues to solidify against him, each fierce ugly attack he’s made has only driven him higher in the republican polls. We’ll see if this latest attack will continue that trend, or if he’s finally crossed the kind of line that even the most extremist of republicans can’t abide by.

]]>0Frank Floriohttp://www.stableytimes.com/?p=260262015-07-12T00:37:44Z2015-07-12T00:36:46ZNASCAR Sprint Cup race schedule heads to the Quaker State 400 on TV channel and live stream online with late start time

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]]>The NASCAR Sprint Cup schedule heads into the Quaker State 400 race today, as the stock car racing senior circuit reaches the midsection of its 2015 season and the points race begin to become more clear. One driver is dominating the season in the Chase for the Cup, while the drivers behind him have begun to bunch up in the standings. Today’s race has a late start time and airs on a surprise TV channel, as well as a live stream online option.

Kevin Harvick has a sixty-three point lead over the field heading into today’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race action, with Dale Earnhardt Jr having surged into second place with a victory at last weekend’s Daytona race. Jimmie Johnson is four points behind Junior in third place, with Joey Logano and Martin Truex Jr rounding out the top five on the leaderboard.

Today’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Quaker State 400 race has a start time schedule of 7:30pm eastern time and airs on TV channel NCBSN, the NBC Sports Network. The race is also being made available as a live stream online.